


Last of the Real Ones

by bardy_boi (clockworkgirl221)



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Gen, M/M, Multi, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 00:26:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15545568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkgirl221/pseuds/bardy_boi
Summary: In a world where everyone has platonic soulmates, and one day in their youth receives memories of soulmates past, Jaune awakens remembering his friends: Ruby Rose, Yang Xiao Long, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, Nora Valkyrie, Lie Ren, Pyrrha Nikos, Sun Wukong, and Penny Polendina… and one other.But where is Oscar Pine?





	Last of the Real Ones

**Author's Note:**

> There needs to be more Oscar/Jaune fic, in my opinion. What is this ship’s name? Also, title from a Fall Out Boy song… just as a little inspiration. Spoilers for Volumes 3 and 4.

Jaune woke with a start.

“So that’s why Ruby told me I was one of her platonic soulmates the day we met,” he thought, chuckling to himself. “And Pyrrha mentioned I would be one of the last to remember them all.”

Jaune went through the dream, trying to remember details: his school friends, most of them now juniors in high school, had been friends through the ages, apparently. Each generation might have had one of their group reincarnations. They always found each other, after all.

One time, they were in a different world altogether, and Pyrrha and Penny had died, sparking off a war. In this world, there was magic and beast-hunting. Ruby had met him first in this world too, and in several other worlds and incarnations beside.

“Platonic soulmates,” Jaune murmured to himself as he threw off the covers. “And yet…”

In many incarnations, one or two of his platonic soulmates would end up in a romantic partnership with him in some way. He had been in love with Pyrrha before she died in the fantasy-esque incarnation, but in others he had been with the other girls, and even some of the boys, too.

It was amazing to remember a lot of these memories, but it had also given Jaune a big headache, so he fought off any more treks down the vast memory lane the world had suddenly given him, choosing instead to focus on getting ready for the day.

\--

“Are there any more like us?” Jaune asked of Ren before classes started for the day. Ren seemed to be the smartest of the group even in this incarnation.

“Not that I know of,” Ren replied with a shrug. “Not anymore. Maybe in the beginning we were just like everyone else, but over time, soulmates became less and less known throughout the world. We may be the last of the true soulmates.”

“What do you think happened to the others?” Jaune asked.

“Soulmates are meant to find one another,” Pyrrha said to his right. “Maybe, over time, soulmates couldn’t find each other, and so their links to one another were lost.”

“How sad,” Nora said, and Ruby nodded from her perch on the outside stair railing.

“We might fade, too,” Blake said darkly.

Everyone stared at her. She shrugged, “We have one more who hasn’t awakened to his memories yet.”

“Oscar,” Ruby breathed. “He was always the youngest of our group, but I never searched for him in this life. I can’t feel his presence unless he awakens, or I come into contact with him like I did with all of you…”

“Can anyone do that?” Jaune asked, “Feel the others?”

“Can’t you?” Ruby asked, shrugging and smiling at him, “That special humming now that you’ve found us? You can feel it even if you hadn’t awakened, yet. Yang and I felt special around one another for years before we awoke to our true memories.”

Jaune went inward for a second. He remembered the warmth his friends had given him before he had awakened to his true memories that morning. Now he felt a powerful vibration coming from each one in turn as he looked at them. He smiled, “I suppose I always thought that true friendships in general made you feel warmth. Then again, I didn’t have a friend group like you until I came here to Beacon High…”

Nora embraced him, “Aw, you say the sweetest things!”

Jaune looked to Blake, “You think if we don’t find Oscar, our memories of each other will fade away?”

Blake shrugged, “After this incarnation, even if one soulmate is lost to us, we could lose all our ability to remember each other, and that would break our bond. It’s a cruel way of keeping people together.”

Jaune looked at each one of his friends, wiping his hands on his jeans as he remembered each memory he had of times with each one them. The good times, the bad times… no matter what, these people had found him, to keep them together through the long years reincarnating together…

“Then we should find Oscar, shouldn’t we?” he asked.

Pyrrha sighed, “And how are we gonna do that? He could be miles away.”

“We could wait it out,” Penny said, “Maybe he’ll come to us eventually.”

Ruby jumped up from her perch, “Doesn’t mean we can’t start trying, at least. What’s the plan, Jaune?”

Jaune paused, looking to the ground as if it would somehow help. Then he shook his head, “I don’t know yet. But I’m sure I’ll think of something.”

\--

The memories were still swirling. Without his all friends present, they seemed to become stronger: making him see and hear and feel things. It peaked during his second-to-last class of the day, his head pounding and aching.

“Teacher!” Ruby suddenly called from his right. “Jaune looks like he’s about to pass out. Can I take him to the nurse?”

With the teacher’s permission, Ruby guided Jaune gently to the nurse’s office. After explaining the situation, without the mention of soulmate memories, the nurse let Ruby lead Jaune to an empty bed to make him lie down.

“You’re not used to all the memories yet, so you’re gonna get headaches for a little while until the novelty dies down,” she told him in a whisper. “Get a lot more rest than you usually do, and maybe try meditation? It worked for Ren and Nora...”

Jaune smiled up at her, “You’re an angel,” he told her softly. After a few moments he closed his eyes, muttering, “And thanks for letting me throw-up on your shoes that first day… and continuing to be my friend after all that. That might have been the bond that made you stick around but…. Thanks anyway.”

Ruby grinned, “I like the thought of soulmates. People in your life you truly connect with on a spiritual level? I don’t want to go on not remembering you guys. That’s why I stick around, even if you didn’t really remember who I was for a couple years there...”

Jaune nodded, “I like the thought of soulmates, too. I’m happy to know that we were all platonically together throughout the years. Even the years where I was romantically involved with at least one of you…”

“Those were often by choice,” Ruby told him. She took his hand and squeezed it, “I’ll come back for you after school. Rest up, all right? I’ll tell Ren to break out his guided meditation CD again.”

“Thank, Ruby,” Jaune replied.

When Ruby left, the room became silent again. He felt tired and weak, but he knew that his friends were there for him, as they had for centuries before, in other worlds and other time periods, and other circumstances. He was just on the edge of sleep when a small voice said, “Can I get you--oh, sorry, you’re nearly asleep.”

That feeling.

That feeling of recognition, the warmth he felt after meeting Ruby and the others…

Jaune’s eyes snapped open, “Oscar?” he asked, mouth suddenly dry.

\--

“You found him?” Nora asked, her hands clasped behind her head. “That was fast.”

“He’s a freshman! That’s why we never felt him or saw him! He was in a different building most of the day, and then he was always volunteering in the nurse’s office!” Jaune crowed.

“We’ve been to the nurse’s office thousands of times this year,” Yang said, taken aback.

“You mean you have, Yang,” Weiss snarked.

“He doesn’t quite believe that he’s my soulmate,” Jaune said, “Our soulmate, I mean. I may have quoted Ruby when I met him.”

“‘I just have a funny feeling you’re my soulmate?’” Penny asked. “Ruby Rose, accidental bisexual flirt.”

Ruby blushed, “Hey, I just tell it like it is… except I forget that soulmates these days are always skewed toward the romantic variety in books and television…”

“I didn’t know what else to say,” Jaune said, scratching the back of his head. “Poor kid thinks I was coming on to him, or even delusional. All he wanted to do was know if I needed something before I spouted out what to him must have been psychobabble.”

“Well, at least we know he’s here,” Blake replied softly, smiling slightly. “I’m… relieved.”

Ruby hugged her, and soon everyone was piling on to the cynical cat-lover. Pyrrha broke away, though, tapping Jaune on the back between his shoulder blades.

“What’s your plan now? Wait for him to awaken and remember us?” she asked. “Or do what Ruby has done and incorporate him into the group so that when he does awaken, he’ll have a better time of slipping into things?”

Jaune smiled at her, and then at everyone, “The latter, of course. If what Ruby told me is true, then sometime in his high school years, he should awaken. You guys were all early, but I didn’t awaken until literally this morning. So there is hope that he will remember us all eventually, and while we’re all still in school together.”

“But you scared him off,” Weiss stated. “And who knows how awkward he will get with any of the rest of us. He seems like the awkward type.”

“If he stuttered and dashed from the room after Jaune accidently came on to him,” Yang nodded, “who’s to say how he will react to any old high school junior coming up to him and speaking with him normally.”

“I can fix things!” Jaune exclaimed. “I mean, I will fix things. I think the reason he came to me in this life means something…”

Ruby smiled, “Maybe it does. But if you need any help, you know we’re all here.”

Jaune smiled and nodded. “Let me try on my own first.”

\--

“Is Oscar Pine in this class?” Jaune asked the next day during break.

The wide-eyed freshman Jaune had asked looked up at his upperclassman in awe, “Uh… yeah, he is.”

Jaune nodded, “Will you get him for me?”

The freshman nodded, and a few minutes later Jaune saw him speaking to the small dark-haired boy he had scared off the day before. Jaune smiled when Oscar looked over to him, but then the freshman in question frowned and blushed over his freckles. To his classmate, he shook his head vigorously, but when pressed, and then physically pulled up, he went over to Jaune after a while with a small push from several of the other freshman around him.

“Um…” said the freshman softly, “How did you… know my name?”

Jaune grinned, “I asked the nurse after you ran off.”

“Oh,” Oscar said. “Um… I… never got your name…”

“Yeah, and I came to apologize about that,” Jaune replied. “I was delirious. Bad headache, not enough sleep the night before, a whole group of friends who wouldn’t let me sleep during lunch. I’m Jaune Arc.”

Oscar nodded, but stared at the hand Jaune had put out for him to shake like it was a snake. Jaune raised an eyebrow, “You usually shake it.”

Oscar limply took Jaune’s hand and squeezed it before pulling away. “Um… I guess you’re forgiven? You just… surprised me, is all. I was never told what to do if someone… said those kinds of things to me…”

“Humor them,” Jaune replied with a shrug. “But that’s only if you can gain something from them. That’s what my dad taught me, at least.”

Oscar shrugged again, “I… lived on a farm for most of my life. Home-schooled until… my uncle…? Ozpin came and enrolled me in his school.”

Jaune nodded, then did a comical double take, “Your uncle is the headmaster of this school?”

Oscar put out both hands like he was calming down a large golden retriever, “I’m not sure if he’s my uncle or not. My aunt recently died, and before I was put in the foster system, Mr. Ozpin-- sorry, Uncle Oz, took me in…”

Jaune thought about this for a long while. He remembered Ozpin’s energy from several of his past memories, including the fact that Oz’s aura and Oscar’s had mixed together at one point in one of the incarnations. He decided to put a pin in that line of thinking, as Oscar was fidgeting even more than he had been under Jaune’s seemingly intense stare.

Jaune smiled, “Do you want to eat lunch with me and my friends? As an apology for scaring you. Unless you have some people you eat with at lunch.”

Oscar shrugged, “Not really. Oz sometimes has lunch with me, but if he knew I had… other kids… to eat with, I could probably get permission to eat with you.”

“What’s high school without socializing?” Jaune asked, absentmindedly putting his hand on the tanned boy’s shoulders. “And you didn’t have Ruby Rose to sweep you into her inner circle your first day.”

“Who?” Oscar asked.

Jaune shook his head. “I’ll come and get you at lunch time, and you’ll meet her.”

\--

Jaune and his friends ate on the roof.

“I… didn’t know you could be up here,” Oscar told them, holding his food tray awkwardly as he stood in the center of the rooftop.

Nora jumped up from her spot between Ren and Pyrrha, clapping her hands, “Ozpin adopted you?! Cute little you?!”

“Nora,” Jaune laughed from behind Oscar, just closing the door to the roof behind him. “He’s skittish of people.”

“Better get used to us, little one,” Ren told the freshman with a chuckle.

“Oscar Pine!” Ruby called, sitting a little ways away with Weiss, Blake, and Yang. She waved. “Sun’s the last of us to arrive today, I guess.”

“But we’re all here,” Blake told her with a warm smile. “We’ll remember each other in our next life.”

Oscar must have heard her, for he glanced over to Jaune, who shrugged and sat down on the concrete, patting an empty spot next to him. Ruby nodded happily when she saw Oscar get somewhat comfortable next to the blond.

“Do you feel anything?” Nora asked, sitting next to them both a little ways from where she had been sitting moments ago.

“Any… thing?” Oscar asked, keeping his tray close to his person and leaning away from the redhead.

“Any warmth, or recognition of any of us?” Nora asked, not really reading the situation.

“You don’t need to answer right away,” Jaune said. “I had no idea what anyone was talking about the first time I sat down with them, either.”

“And if you’re here to stay, you’ll understand soon anyway,” Ruby said, moving to the little group Oscar was attracting.

Sun soon joined them up there on the roof, and lunch went on as it usually did.

\--

Oscar was waiting for Jaune the next day at lunch too, tray in hand.

“You can go on up there by yourself, you know,” Jaune told the younger boy as they mounted the stairs up to the roof together.

“I… didn’t want to be alone when I got up there,” Oscar replied. “Uncle Oz thinks your group is the best place for me from now on, and… I don’t want to eat alone again, or with Oz and my homeroom teacher.”

“Which of the freshman homeroom teachers do you have?” Jaune asked.

“Mr. Branwen.”

Jaune winced, “Why he’s still a freshman teacher surprises me. He’s better suited to the seniors…”

Oscar shrugged, “He’s nice enough… but then again, I live with his boyfriend.”

Jaune laughed, “Oh, god, finally.”

\--

“Remember the food fight our first year at the Beacon in Remnant?” Nora crowed.

The group talked about past memories a lot, even when Jaune wasn’t awake to his own yet. Now that he remembered, the stories his other friends told weren’t as far-fetched, but he felt for Oscar, who often stared at the storyteller, food touching his lips, but arm frozen in place.

Jaune elbowed Oscar slightly, “Still not used to the random stories, are you?”

Oscar flushed. The first time someone had started in on a past life memory, the boy had thought that the group was talking about a campaign for Dungeons & Dragons, but Ruby had laughed in his face and simply said, “You’ll remember it in time, Oscar.”

Oscar didn’t want to say anything anymore about anything. Jaune smiled.

“Do you believe in soulmates, Oscar?” he asked as Nora chattered on about the food fight from one of their many memories together, Ruby and Yang chiming in whenever they felt it necessary to clarify, even though everyone at this point remembered their own details of the story.

Oscar looked over, a bit of a deer-in-the-headlights expression on his freckled face. They both seemed to remember how they met in this life, and both of them blushed accordingly.

Jaune plowed on, “Well, do you?”

Oscar started picking at the remnants of his food. “Well… Uncle Oz has said some things about… about Mr. Branwen being his soulmate… but he’s mentioned Miss Goodwitch and some other people… I thought he meant he was polyamorous but… the way he’s said things says more… friendship.”

Jaune felt warm, though it was a different feeling than the way he felt with his friends. Maybe Ozpin…

“Soulmates can be friends, too,” Jaune found himself saying. He gestured to all his friends, “These are my soulmates. There is a belief among a lot of them that we were all together in our past lives, too. Many of us platonically, but some of us were romantically involved within the group… different pairings in different incarnations.”

Oscar seemed to chew on this statement as he chewed on the last bit of a chicken nugget he had seemed to have forgotten to eat. “I did feel like… I knew you.”

“What?” Jaune asked.

Oscar breathed in, and then out slowly, gathering his thoughts and his courage. “When you… you said that to me. In the nurse’s office. When I saw you I… I was hit with such recognition for your face, your voice… but I know we had never met before then. And then the next day, when you put your hand on my shoulder… I felt like you had done that a hundred times before. And your smile… and then everyone else… I had such a feeling of deja vu…”

Oscar quieted, and it was then Jaune noticed that everyone else on the rooftop had quieted down to listen as well.

“You always were a little more aware than the others,” Ren said softly. “Even though you were always the last one to awaken with your full memories, you always knew to find us.”

“Or you had help,” Ruby said with a nod. “There was another soulmate set that always looked out for us back then…”

Oscar flushed, “I think they’re still around.”

“Ozpin,” Blake and Ren said nearly at the same time, and then laughed together fondly.

“He never was forthright with us,” Yang stated, “But he’s always had our backs when it came to getting us all together again.”

Oscar was quiet through all of this, thinking and rethinking. “It makes sense,” he said softly. “I can’t believe it all makes sense.”

\--

“There are no marks… just memories,” Jaune told Oscar for what seemed like the eighth time since the two of them had met. They were walking together during a break they both seemed to have in their school day in the woods around Beacon High School.

“And we’re all platonically linked?”

“You seem a lot more talkative about all this now that you believe me about this soulmate thing,” Jaune replied, laughing.

“Uncle Oz told me a story about how God created us all with four arms and four legs and two heads, but split those humans in half when they got too powerful, and that’s how soulmates started. When did soulmate groups come into being, then?” Oscar asked. “Why are we platonically linked? What’s the point?”

“People aren’t meant to be alone?” Jaune replied with a shrug. “Sometimes you need an entire community to feel loved and protected? A person is better protected from all around them than at just one other point? And some people are aromantic, or asexual, and they deserve love too, right?”

Oscar nodded, and seemed to have trouble with another thought. After a long time of companionable silence, he managed, “You mentioned that romantic links... evolved... in past incarnations... That usually that incarnation.... chose.... someone from the group to pursue romantically… or fell for one of them.”

“I did.”

“Did anyone choose me?” Oscar asked, stopping in his tracks.

Jaune paused, turning his full body to look at his younger companion. Then he blinked, rushing back into his memories. It seemed to him that he was down memory lane for a long while. He had pined for Pyrrha, had loved and been loved by each and every one of his platonic soulmates as the long years and incarnations passed...

… Jaune blushed.

“You?” Oscar asked.

Jaune shook his head, “Everyone’s been with you at some point. Except me.”

Oscar’s golden-green eyes widened, and Jaune heard him sniff. Jaune saw a flash of something in the corner of Oscar’s eyes before the younger boy turned and fled the forest path.

“Oscar? Oscar!” Jaune called, but to no avail.

\--

“No Oscar again?” Ruby asked.

Jaune shook his head, “He wouldn’t even see me.”

“So he’s here at school, the little bastard,” Nora said, and walked toward the roof stair door.

“Nora, no,” Penny called.

Jaune sat next to Ruby and Ren, who both turned their bodies toward him to accommodate him into their conversation.

“I don’t understand why he’s mad?” Jaune said, putting his tray sadly on the ground and picking at the cold mac and cheese.

“You did tell him that you never chose him as a romantic partner,” Ren told him.

“Shot the poor boy right down,” Ruby sang.

“What?” Jaune asked.

“This is almost as bad as when you didn’t realize I loved you until I died,” Pyrrha said, crossing her arms and frowning. “Except now I’m here, and I’ll tell it to you straight: that boy is crushing on you hard.”

“How… how do you guys know this?” Jaune asked, blushing slightly. “It could have been something else I said. It could have been that Oscar is going back on believing this whole entire thing about us all being soulmates.”

“You could be in denial,” Ruby put in, crossing her arms and smiling like she won an award. “Think about it, Jaune. You’ve been romantically involved with everyone in our soulmate circle. Except for poor Oscar. This is probably the cycle where you do get together.”

“And you have all our blessings,” Nora chirped, slapping Sun on the back and causing him to choke on his homemade sandwich.

Jaune’s eyes went wide. “Is that why Oscar ran. It was my fault? I mentioned I never… and he…”

“How did anyone of us survive a crush on him?” Pyrrha asked.

“You didn’t,” Sun answered, which got him an elbow in the rib from Penny, thankfully.

Jaune paused for a minute, trying to sweep gracefully into a standing position, but Sun’s words caught him in the middle and he shot a terrified look at Pyrrha.

“It was thousands of years ago, Jaune,” she told him. “I’m over it already.”

He nodded, stretching his legs out to the full. Ruby got up as well and walked him to the door back into the school’s stairwell. Jaune looked at her.

Ruby just smiled and opened the door for him. “Honestly, I’ve been waiting for this incarnation,” she told him.

“Just because of me and Oscar?”

Ruby shrugged, “Well… Yang and I get to be sisters again, even though she is technically my step sister this time around. But yes. Any life where I get to see Oscar happy is a good one. He always seemed to struggle the most. But you… you were always the knight character in each of our incarnations. You’ll be good to him, at least.”

Jaune stared at Ruby for a long time. “The knight?”

“Oh,” Ruby chuckled, “Not literally. I mean, you had a sword and shield in Remnant. But in those other worlds, in those other timelines? You were always the one who protected the others. And we protected you. And Oscar… well… he was the baby of the group. He always had some… extra growing to do. And sometimes Ozpin’s voice in his head.”

Jaune nodded, remembering those odd lives where Ozpin was the voice in Oscar’s head, and not just his father, or uncle, or guardian in some way.

“He really has looked out for us, that Ozpin.”

“I think he’s the one who blessed us,” Ruby replied with a wink. “Think about it. In this life, we don’t see Oscar until he’s Ozpin’s adopted son and put into Ozpin’s own school, where all of his old platonic soulmates are, just waiting for a big old reunion. If it’s not Ozpin, then it’s someone around here who wants our group to remember each other in incarnations to come.”

“We’re stronger together than we are apart.”

“Yeah,” Ruby replied brightly. “I believe you’re right. And I suppose none of is us are truly anything without Oscar…”

Jaune nodded. “Sorry for being an idiot.”

Ruby shook her head, “Never change, Jaune Arc. And I suppose you never will. Not truly. You’ll just… grow up. But not too much.”

\--

Oscar saw Jaune at the door to his classroom this time. No amount of his classmates egging him would make him come any closer to Jaune, until Mr. Branwen swept passed Jaune and pushed Oscar toward the upperclassman on his way to his own desk.

“Can I talk to you outside?” Jaune asked softly.

Oscar lowered his head and eyes, but didn’t really budge from his spot in the doorway.

“It’s probably something you don’t want the rest of your class hearing,” Jaune whispered.

Oscar flushed, and stepped out of the classroom, closing the door behind him. “What is it?” he asked as soon as he was out of the small window view of the classroom.

“I seem to be apologizing a lot,” Jaune stated, and put his hand up before Oscar could speak, “I wanted to say I’m sorry about the other day. Whatever it was that I said that set you off… I’m sorry it hurt or offended you. I have… so many memories in my head, and I keep forgetting that you haven’t woken up to your own yet.”

“I’m sorry for having so many questions,” Oscar replied. He went to open the door again, but Jaune stopped him.

“That last question. About your romantic links. Did I make you uncomfortable?”

Oscar paused, his hand on the door handle. “I’m still getting over all that. Once I do… I’ll come back to the group.”

Jaune nodded. “Fair enough.”

\--

“I would be freaking out about the thousands of past lives we have with each other,” Nora said after school when Jaune finally got around to telling them all about his conversation with Oscar earlier. “I mean, romance is awesome, but having as many soulmates as we do… I mean… aren’t we the last of the real soulmates or whatever?”

“Some of the last, yes,” Ren said. “I have my suspicions about Ozpin and some of the other teachers here.”

“I’m sure everyone here has their suspicions about Ozpin,” Pyrrha said, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Oscar’s, like, fourteen,” Yang said with an eyeroll to Nora, “Puberty has us all thinking about the most attractive people to take us to the prom or whatever.”

“Someone has been paying attention in psychology,” Pyrrha quipped, punching the blonde in the arm with a good-natured smile.

“Just so I can understand why everyone is being so stupid toward each other,” Yang countered.

“When you have a lot of soulmates to choose from,” Sun said with a lascivious grin, “I would be overwhelmed, too.”

“But Oscar only has eyes for Jaune,” Ruby cooed, bending toward Jaune as she teased him.

Jaune flushed, “It was bound to happen. You said so yourself. My soul has chosen each one of you at least once, and him not at all.”

Ruby straightened, her smile turning a little sad. “Your soul, yes.”

\--

Oscar was back after the weekend.

“Good to have you back, Oscar!” Nora shouted, hanging off the smaller teen. He didn’t seem too anxious having the redhead hang off him anymore.

But he still couldn’t look Jaune in the eye.

“How did I do this before?’ Jaune whispered to Ren.

Ren shrugged, “I never truly understood myself, actually. I think one of us had to approach you first… except with Weiss.”

“But that’s just Weiss,” Pyrrha cut in. “Oh, and there was that one time with Sun…”

“But Sun’s just an idiot,” Jaune replied with a fond nod of his head.

“What about me?” Sun asked.

“Nothing bad,” Ren replied.

Jaune watched Oscar interact with Nora and Ruby, who were seated alongside Blake, Weiss, and Yang a little ways away. If Oscar ever caught him looking, Jaune would turn away slowly and try and focus on something one of the others was saying: Ren and Pyrrha started talking about World War I, and Jaune had trouble separating his memories of that time and the notes from his World History class.

Ruby bounded up to him before their first class after lunch. “That puppy-dog face really suits you, Mr. Golden Retriever.”

“What?”

Ruby giggled. “If Oscar hasn’t noticed your extreme longing for him, he’s an idiot.”

Jaune only flushed and found a seat toward the back of the classroom.

\--

Oscar was slow to warm up to Jaune again, but he did after a couple more days. Ruby and Pyrrha really helped by dragging Jaune over to their seating area at lunch and when they all met up after school before their respective parents picked them up, or the smarter ones of the group headed to the public library a few blocks over from school.

It was a few weeks later that Oscar finally awoke to his true memories.

He didn’t say anything about it at first. He went straight to his homeroom class upon arrival to school in the morning, and during lunch, he was completely absent.

Nora was the one who burst onto the roof yelling, “Oscar’s in the nurse’s office from nausea and a bad headache. We all know what that means.”

“Oscar was always hit the hardest,” Ruby said as she and Jaune were both up in a flash.

The entire group swarmed into the nurse’s office, where Ozpin was sitting with a fevered Oscar, a mug of coffee in his hands. He was talking quietly with Mr. Branwen, but they both quietly left the room as Oscar’s whole soulmate group came in and crowded around him.

Ruby had the decency to push Jaune to the front of the group, just as Oscar’s eyes fluttered open from the sudden noise and spike of temperature from so many bodies in one room.

“I’m fine,” he said when he saw Ruby and Jaune standing over him.

“You remember, don’t you?” Ruby asked, crossing her arms rather smugly.

Oscar looked away, ”It feels like my brain is splitting open from a overflow of… stuff.”

“You had Ozpin in your brain for a couple lives there… you probably have the weirdest memories that I know none of us share,” Pyrrha told him with a smile.

“He’s okay!” Nora crowed, “All right, we can clear out.”

“It might be better on him if we see him in shifts,” Ren nodded, pushing Blake and Weiss out of the room slightly.

\--

The room soon cleared out so that only Jaune was sitting with Oscar. Jaune had asked Ozpin if he could sit out of classes and watch over Oscar for the rest of the afternoon, and the headmaster had allowed him with only a small twitch of a smile.

“You really never chose me,” Oscar said softly. Jaune had thought Oscar had been deeply asleep still. “After all this time.”

Jaune’s heart broke at the tone in Oscar’s voice. He shrugged, “Yeah. I’m an idiot.”

Oscar’s breath hitched, and his eyes fluttered closed again. Jaune’s hand found Oscar’s, and Oscar’s eyes opened again to look up at his upperclassman, a bit of a surprised huff coming out of his slightly parted lips.

“But maybe that just means that this life is the one where I do…” Jaune said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Oscar squeezed Jaune’s hand, “That does make a lot of sense. Even if we have a thousand more lives together after this… why wait?”

Jaune smiled, feeling very, very warm in the moment. “Get some rest, Oscar. I remember when I first awoke. You’ll be wanting plenty of rest, and a good meditation practice, or your head might explode.”

**Author's Note:**

> You made it!
> 
> This might have a part two. Depends on how I feel, and whether the second part makes sense when and if I get it done.
> 
> Thanks for giving this a chance anyway!


End file.
